Çoban/Romence
Cioban - A Romanian Highland Shepherd *These people actually do look like that, but even for us Romanians, it is as impressive as it would be for a foreigner meeting one of them. They are quite rare birds. Imagine yourself biking at a MTB contest up in the mountains, and having a character like that looking at you weird when you pass by his sheep heard. At a skyrunning contest last year, there were two sheperds somewhere up in the mountains, near the running path, that were playing - one of them was playing a flute and another one was beating on some kind of skin-made traditional drum. It was raining and there were already some tens of kilometers passed from the start. I was very tired, alone, and I swear to god that I started crying tears of joy when I saw them just sitting alone and playing in the rain like that to encourage me. They were the true reason why I finished that very difficult contest that took us above 2000 meters through heavy snow a couple of times and gave me frostbites. I still have tears in my eyes when I write this and I remeber those sheperds. *He seems tired of the photograph's shit tho *What area of Romania is he from? *Wallachia *suspicious_kitten *Looking at the blouse, I would say Marginimea Sibiului or the northern parts of Vâlcea and Gorj counties. *Bulgaria: Чобан United States of America Gersun Looks like a Vlach. We use the same root for shepherd in Ukraine (chaban). Interesting! 5 months ago We use the same root for shepherd in Ukraine (chaban). Interesting! Its the same in Turkey -- Choban, like the yogurt company! The word is originally from Persian Finland onkko Paimen in finnish. Its probably finno-ugric. From paimentaa (to herd) Supposedly a Baltic loanword, or Proto-Balto-Slavic to be precise. Lithuanian has piemuo, Ancient Greek ποιμήν/poimeen would be a cognate too. From PIE poh₂imn̥, with peh₂- protect. Supposedly Uralics didn't practice animal husbandry before encountering Proto-Indo-European on the Urals, hence much Iranic or similar PIE words loaned for pastoralism. Finland onkko You could be right, im not linguistic. Neither am I, but an amateur who googled out of curiosity and decided to share the findings. There's also the hypothesis that Proto-Indo-Arian of Sintashta and Andronovo culture was actually a mixed people speaking both local PIE dialect and Proto-Finno-Ugric (Samoyedics would have already stayed at Sayany mountains, maybe having some contact with pseudo-Tochars if any), eventually starting its own Proto-Indo-Iranic before moving south and back west. While another part, the Ugrics, would stay in the South Ural steppes preferring its Ugric dialect, and would later turn into proto-Hungarians, with Saami, Finnic, Volgaic and Permic peoples moving further northwest contacting extreme north-eastern (Pre?)Proto-Balto-Slavs along the way before reaching proto-Germanics in Fennoscandia. There is that weird phenomenon where Uralic languages seem to have borrowed much basic vocabulary from Indo-European but not sending any back. There's even extremely ancient borrowing from Proto-Kartvelian - the word for wine - into PIE, but no Uralic loans except for place names. No satisfactory explanaition as of yet. Like I can only think of morzh for mursu and tundra from Finnish tunturi or Saami, but there are modern words loan like ~500 years ago or so, not 4000 years ago. So paimen is old loan? Paimen is old word and its borrowed ages ago. First times when you see it is when written finnish became. Pastori is almost as old. paimen would precede pastori and Latin by a couple millennia. First borrowings from Proto-Indo-Iranian would be ~4000 years old, from Proto-Balto-Slavic maybe a thousand years later. Same in Serbian. Čobanin, or čoban. You can also use pastir In Greek too, chobanis or chopanis (τσομπάνης / τσοπάνης). He looks unsheepishly badass! Like Gandalf the taupe. In Croatia today, we use the same word as a pejorative for a person that lacks culture, is loud and has bad manners. :/ The irony is that a čoban is closer to its culture than those liberal urban kids using the word will ever be. Rep. Srpska It's not just kids using it. Adults use it too. Pretty sure that applies to all the ex-Yu. He could fit well in the north Caucasus. Cobanovlach How wasn't he in the cast of Game of Thrones? apparently sheep arent as cool as direwolves